Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Idris2002]

You mock, but which of us would be brave enough to challenge privilege in the Toronto yoga community?

Shit writes itself, dude.

 

[sihhi]

hahahaha:

Here's the bit from LP's talk at the Oxford Union about who the 'we' at the Union is. The people Comrade Tariq was wining and dining.

Who are we? People who are ambitious. People who expect to be in the top 10 to 1% of global society, either now or in a few years. People who are members of the Oxford Union or are invited to speak at the Oxford Union, or lucky enough to have been invited to speak at the Oxford Union and what does it mean for us to say that we are feminists? Well, one of the reasons I wanted to speak against the motion was I agree with the speaker who actually stole my point and can see me afterwards about it... for any reason he likes really.
I believe that if we say that we are feminists we have missed the point of what feminism is about. Feminism is not about an identity, about saying 'it's all fine, we're feminists' cause maybe some of us can be equal within a system, we're feminists because for fifty years women have been allowed to be members of this society. Well is that a measure of social progress across the world, is it really?
Can we say we are all feminists now because, for example, maybe in a few years women will be allowed to be members of the Garrick Club? Fantastic, but personally I don't think that that is the main measure of what feminism is. Representation on the upper echelons of society. We now have this ridiculous debate over whether women can have it all?
Actually at the dinner before this, I talked to a couple of women who were already wondering how they were going to balance family life with their very big ambitions for what they are going to do when they leave Oxford. This idea of what can you do if you..., can we have it all, where it all is marriage to a man and babies - that's apparently all we're allowed to want now that's the standard. I think a few years ago there was a kind of feminism, and a kind of political imagination that allowed us to want more than that, different to that. It was a different right to not got married, to not to want to have babies. This idea that the most important thing a woman not a man can ever do is to hold a child, a child that she has given birth to.
Actually, this is why I am not good debating, because when I heard all of you guys applaud when the honourable member said that, um I felt a bit sick and I had to leave the room [Applause] Thank you. [More Applause] Um thanks, um no but really I did. Some of you saw me leave and I was like I actually didn't know if I was going to come back in, because I thought 'Wow this is what this debate has come to, people applauding at such reactionary, disgusting opinions and sentiments'. How far have we not come in, in, in one of the most privileged rooms in the c-, people here who are going to be powerful in the next few years we are applauding the idea that this is the highest most important thing a woman can do. And then I came back in and I am glad I came back in because then I heard very young people saying things about feminism that I- I hadn't even got to yet in some cases. People, of both genders, the audience making such wonderful powerful speeches about what feminism means to them. I thought all right, all right. Over the last few weeks, it's not just people in this room who have given me hope, I've just come back from Cairo where I did some reporting in Tahrir Square you might - I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ...

 

[rekil]

What are Jodhi May's leftist credentials?

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

She was in Defiance with James Bond, having a go at the nazi jackboot.

 

[el-ahrairah]

I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ...

i could read that bit all day.

 

[el-ahrairah]

People, of both genders,

however, the intersectionality hat she is not wearing. defaults to two genders

 

[Bakunin]

Kyriarchy? That one's new to me.

Wasn't Kyriarchy one of these guys?

 

[TruXta]

Wasn't Kyriarchy one of these guys?

Let's hope so. My first thought was that it had to with Kyrie Eleison somehow

 

[The39thStep]

I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ... I am a reporter - I have a hat. This is my reporter's hat you get one actually, but they don't you about that when they're doing the media talks but you are all given a hat, I wear mine. ...

 

[ViolentPanda]

You mock, but which of us would be brave enough to challenge privilege in the Toronto yoga community?

I'll do it if you let me take a couple of machetes to defend myself with.

Does Toronto have as "Stand Your Ground" law, do you know?

 

[DaveCinzano]

i could read that bit all day.

 

[rekil]

Elbowing into Greg Palast's personal brand isn't it.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Elbowing into Greg Palast's personal brand isn't it.

Greg Dyke does Mickey Spillane

 

[sihhi]

Apologies for having to rake over this - it's not an assault on any category of mental health patient / survivor however identified, but these different accounts don't sit well together:

LP in 2010

It took me a year of hospitalisation, two relapses and a whole lot of work on myself to heal, but I'm there now, and I'm never going back. And I know others, men and women, who have made full recoveries. It's rare, but it does happen, and if the NHS took eating disorders more seriously it'd happen a lot more often. I was incredibly lucky in the care I recieved, which I got because I had private healthcare cover. If I had been treated by the NHS, there's every chance I wouldn't be alive today.

in 2013

In my mid-teens, I had a severe breakdown that required hospitalisation. It worries me that many of the vital services that helped me to recover – fast, free treatment on the NHS, support in the community from my doctor and college nurse ... are no longer available.

 

[TruXta]

Ooooops!

 

[el-ahrairah]

well, at least she's lying for a good cause, i guess.

 

[sihhi]

The cause being that young people can hack an end to economic and environmental injustice. A different kind of shift:

in 2010

growing up after the end of the cold war, we have no coherent sense of the possibility of alternatives to neoliberal politics. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek observed that for young people today, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. For us, revolution is a retro concept whose proper use is to sell albums, t-shirts and tickets to hipster discos, rather than a serious political argument.


in 2013

Now here’s a feeling: today’s teenagers are going to grow up to save the world. I get the feeling – too cautious and unformed to be an honest hope yet – that with the right support, this cohort of young people has the tools my generation lacked to hack a way out of the economic and environmental crisis closing in on us.

 

[Limerick Red]

The cause being that young people can hack an end to economic and environmental injustice. A different kind of shift:

in 2010

growing up after the end of the cold war, we have no coherent sense of the possibility of alternatives to neoliberal politics. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek observed that for young people today, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. For us, revolution is a retro concept whose proper use is to sell albums, t-shirts and tickets to hipster discos, rather than a serious political argument.


in 2013

Now here’s a feeling: today’s teenagers are going to grow up to save the world. I get the feeling – too cautious and unformed to be an honest hope yet – that with the right support, this cohort of young people has the tools my generation lacked to hack a way out of the economic and environmental crisis closing in on us.

I think in fairness on this one, it isnt the same as lying, its just changing one nonsense opinion for another.

 

[el-ahrairah]

it's nice that she is more optimistic about young people though.

 

[sihhi]

I think in fairness on this one, it isnt the same as lying, its just changing one nonsense opinion for another.

Of course it's not lying. Like i said a different kind of shift, a 180 degree about-turn - in just three years - on wider social changes that can be effected by the same generation.

 

[Limerick Red]

Of course it's not lying. Like i said a different kind of shift, a 180 degree about-turn - in just three years - on wider social changes that can be effected by the same generation.

Sorry Im sneakin a peak at work, so I didnt see/read/notice your first line.apologies

 

[The Pale King]

I find the whole discourse of 'generations' being ready or capable of making changes or not capable of same a bit weird tbh, don't get it. Zizek makes that point about apocalypse repeatedly but not as far as I remember (although I may be wrong about this) in specific relation to young people. I suppose it's that 'young people' is Laurie's brand, hence why she writes this generational stuff. She's positioned herself as the columnist who can tell broadsheet readers what the youth is up to, and from her lofty perch she can decide which generation has the x factor and which dosen't.

 

[frogwoman]

I think in fairness on this one, it isnt the same as lying, its just changing one nonsense opinion for another.

what i do quite frequently

 

[love detective]

Apologies for having to rake over this - it's not an assault on any category of mental health patient / survivor however identified, but these different accounts don't sit well together:

LP in 2010



in 2013

I thought at first they must be referring to two different things but it doesn't look like that is the case from what is written in this article by her in 2009

Incidentally that article from 2009 also doesn't sit well with what she says in 2013 about her own experience of the NHS either:-

patients are at the mercy of their postcode, and hospital admission on overstretched general wards is too often a matter of force-feeding followed by rapid discharge. While this physical rehabilitation may put the patient temporarily out of danger, it is useless without addressing her mental distress - and so hospital admission becomes a revolving door, with patients quickly starving themselves again on release. This pushes up the hospitalisation figures even further. Of the nine teenagers on my ward in 2004, only myself and a skeletal boy of 13 were on our first admission.

The high relapse rate points to a tragic waste of medical resources. If proper care were provided for more of Britain's anorexic teenagers, the disease could be treated effectively when it first presents. This is a baffling omission on the part of the NHS, which still recommends that most anorexics be treated "on an outpatient basis". It is also a damning indictment of a culture that persistently fails to take the emotional distress of young adults, and particularly young women, seriously.

It worries me that many of the vital services that helped me to recover – fast, free treatment on the NHS, support in the community from my doctor and college nurse ... are no longer available.

 

[Delroy Booth]

I think in fairness on this one, it isnt the same as lying, its just changing one nonsense opinion for another.

It might not be a lie, it is possible to recieve NHS treatment and have private health insurance too, and to recieve a mixture of both NHS and private care. Private healthcare in this country always leeches off the NHS anyway. Without getting into lurid levels of detail about her illness there's no way to knowing for sure and so I'd rather not speculate over it. I don't really care a great deal if Laurie Penny has or had private healthcare insurance anyway.

I think the interesting bit is how when a journalist so frequently self-references, or uses an anecdote or experience in a rhetorical way when writing articles, there comes with it an occupational hazard of saying things about yourself that in retrospect look pretty contradictory, such as the above two quotes sihhi. It's bound to happen if you try place yourself into every story you ever write. It also gets even trickier if someone wants to be able to change in and out of various guises to suit whichever audience they're talking to, because that'll mean details about yourself being slightly different for each audience. It's definitely not something that just Laurie Penny does either a lot of this goes on the comment pages of all the newspapers, I bet you could find these sorts of inconsistencies in loads of journo's if you look hard enough.

 

[sihhi]

what i do quite frequently

Do you?

Anyway LP's opening paragraph is confusing.

A few weeks ago, I found myself squirrelled away in the corner of a posh party, talking politics with two teenage girls. Were I a right-wing hack addressing an audience of concerned Tory parents, this would be occasion for a stern, salivating rant about how today’s teenagers are abject, semi-criminal, knicker-dropping savages, weaned on violent video games and internet pornography. That’s why they are invariably the most interesting people at any party.

The 'That's why' bit is very confusing. It means either

1 Today's teenagers are not far from "semi-criminal, knicker-dropping savages, weaned on violent video games and internet pornography" and that's why they are invariably the most interesting people at any party.

or

2 The fact that Tory parents (or columnist for them) thinks they are "semi-criminal, knicker-dropping savages, weaned on violent video games and internet pornography" is the reason why they are the most interesting people at any party.

 

[frogwoman]

yeah i change my opinions quite a few times over the years, from one load of bollocks to the next

 

[sihhi]

I thought at first they must be referring to two different things but it doesn't look like that is the case from what is written in this article by her in 2009

Incidentally that article from 2009 also doesn't sit well with what she says in 2013 about her own experience of the NHS either:-

You're right it is odd, in the picture of NHS anorexia treatment in 2004 is described as broadly positive in the 2013 article, but it is was described as broadly negative in the 2009 one.
Presumably it does all make sense and the things/aspects refered to are different ones. I dunno really.

 

[love detective]

You're right it is odd, in the picture of NHS anorexia treatment in 2004 is described as broadly positive in the 2013 article, but it is was described as broadly negative in the 2009 one.
Presumably it does all make sense and the things/aspects refered to are different ones. I dunno really.

actually you might be right - i'd skimmed over this comment from her in the 2009 article:-

I am very lucky to have received such excellent care

So she had good care personally but generally for everyone else (including those in the same ward as her) it's pretty poor - guess that's what private healthcare gets you

 

[killer b]

wasn't she lucky to go to a prestigious private school too? she's one lucky girl for sure.

 

[el-ahrairah]

yeah i change my opinions quite a few times over the years, from one load of bollocks to the next

no one is born wise. the journey to wisdom necessarily requires that you stop occasionally at stupid for a while. we've all been wrong in the past.